THIRTY-FOURA good deal later than this Randal March was taking his way home. He was glad to be done with the day’s business, and very glad to be done with Superintendent Drake. Drake’s reactions to the footprints discovered by Miss Silver had been quite extraordinarily irritating. He was mortified, he was huffed, he took umbrage. He suggested that the footprints might have been made at any time, and when March pointed out that there had been heavy rain on Wednesday afternoon, and that they must have been made since then, he took umbrage all over again. There is, of course, nothing more trying for a police officer than to have a well substantiated theory undermined, or to see it tottering to its fall without being able to give it a sustaining hand. With Rietta Cray and Carr Robertson as sus
